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Get up to € 60 K equity free with Neptune, the Blue Growth Accelerator

Vouchers for SME innovation in new cross-sectoral value chains in Blue Growth

Neptune, the Blue Growth Accelerator, has launched a call for expressions of interest which targets SME, Entrepreneurs and Would-be-Entrepreneurs active in Water, Maritime, Aerospace, ICT & Microelectronics, Agriculture, Logistics, Creative, Energy and Mobility sectors to get direct financial support through vouchers and access to a wide range of professional coaching and mentoring services to develop innovative technologies, services and products in the Blue Growth Sector.

The call, which has a total indicative budget of € 3,232,000, will focus on the following challenges/topics of the Blue Economy in a cross sectoral approach:

Water management in rural environments

Water management in urban environments

Port logistics

Fluvial and maritime transport

Environment

Marine/Water renewable energy

In particular, vouchers of this call can be applied for by SME which are members of one of the NEPTUNE clusters or established in one of the NEPTUNE regions and by would-be entrepreneurs intending to start an SME in the Blue Growth in one of the NEPTUNE regions.

The types of vouchers available and maximum funding for each are the following:

Idea/Project Maturation (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 1,000).

Intellectual Property (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 5,000).

Non-technical Barriers (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 10,000).

Technology Development/Transfer (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 20,000).

Scalability and Internationalisation (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 20,000).

Incubation and Prototyping (for SME and entrepreneurs, up to € 60,000).

Large-scale demonstrators (only for SME, up to € 60,000).

For Vouchers’ type 1, there will be a continuous evaluation of applications received up to September, 2018 (evaluation period will be 1 month). For the rest of vouchers, there will be two cut-off dates during the call:

15/03/ 2017, at 17:00 CET (Evaluation results up to May, 2017).

15/09/2017, at 17:00 CET (Evaluation results up to November, 2017).

Applications for coaching and mentoring services can be submitted additionally to any applications for vouchers.